Our Mutual Friend

by Charles Dickens

The Heralds' College found
out a Crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel on his shield
(or might have done it if he had thought of it), and a caravan of camels
take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and kneel down be
loaded with the salt. Reflects Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark,
tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy--a kind of sufficiently
well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs Veneering;
fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might
have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory,
conscious that a corner of her husband's veil is over herself. Reflects
Podsnap; prosperously feeding, two little light-coloured wiry wings, one
on either side of his else bald head, looking as like his hairbrushes as
his hair, dissolving view of red beads on his forehead, large allowance
of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects Mrs Podsnap; fine woman
for Professor Owen, quantity of bone, neck and nostrils like a
rocking-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress in which Podsnap has
hung golden offerings. Reflects Twemlow; grey, dry, polite, susceptible
to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar and cravat, cheeks drawn
in as if he had made a great effort to retire into himself some years
ago, and had got so far and had never got any farther. Reflects mature
young lady; raven locks, and complexion that lights up well when well
powdered--as it is--carrying on considerably in the captivation of
mature young gentleman; with too much nose in his face, too much ginger
in his whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too much sparkle in
his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Reflects
charming old Lady Tippins on Veneering's right; with an immense obtuse
drab oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up
the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of
false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs Veneering opposite, who
is pleased to be patronized. Reflects a certain 'Mortimer', another
of Veneering's oldest friends; who never was in the house before,
and appears not to want to come again, who sits disconsolate on Mrs
Veneering's left, and who was inveigled by Lady Tippins (a friend of
his boyhood) to come to these people's and talk, and who won't talk.
Reflects Eugene, friend of Mortimer; buried alive in the back of his
chair, behind a shoulder--with a powder-epaulette on it--of the mature
young lady, and gloomily resorting to the champagne chalice whenever
proffered by the Analytical Chemist. Lastly, the looking-glass reflects
Boots and Brewer, and two other stuffed Buffers interposed between the
rest of the company and possible accidents.

The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners--or new people wouldn't
come--and all goes well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made a series of
experiments on her digestive functions, so extremely complicated and
daring, that if they could be published with their results it might
benefit the human race. Having taken in provisions from all parts of the
world, this hardy old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole, when,
as the ice-plates are being removed, the following words fall from her:

'I assure you, my dear Veneering--'

(Poor Twemlow's hand approaches his forehead, for it would seem now,
that Lady Tippins is going to be the oldest friend.)

'I assure you, my dear Veneering, that it is the oddest affair! Like
the advertising people, I don't ask you to trust me, without offering
a respectable reference. Mortimer there, is my reference, and knows all
about it.